By Tom Gilchrist
Staff Writer
WATROUSVILLE — It’s not every day that workers install an elevator in this hamlet along M-81, but visitors to the Watrousville United Methodist Church can ride one up or down to any of three different floors.
“Our members, literally, are getting older and some of them can’t do stairs, and many of them are using walkers, or wheelchairs, or whatever, as the population gets older,” said the Rev. Dr. William P. Sanders, pastor of the church that hosts an open house from 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday to show its $175,000 expansion project.
Church members will provide snacks and refreshments at the open house.
New features at the church include the elevator taking visitors from the church entry level to its basement or its sanctuary level, four restrooms accessible to handicapped visitors, stairs and railings, carpeting, a main entryway on the building’s west side, a septic system and well, and an illuminated cross-and-flame symbol attached to the exterior wall.
In addition, a new nursery/classroom features an electronic speaker transmitting audio from the sanctuary and a window with a view into the sanctuary.
The church, with 103 members, has sought to install the elevator for about 12 years, according to Kim Manke, a member of the church’s Board of Trustees.
“We needed it a long time ago, but everybody had to wait for the money,” Manke said.
Work began April 21, and since then church members have met for worship services at either the Fairgrove United Methodist Church or the Juniata Township Hall. The first service in the expanded church took place Sunday.
The project’s general contractor is Dennis Weber Homes & Renovations. Workers with Artic Elevator of Fairgrove are installing the elevator.
Watrousville United Methodist Church congregation traces its roots to 1856 when — as Watrousville Episcopal Church — members began meeting in a schoolhouse, which is the stone house immediately west of the current church. Members later moved services into the ballroom of a hotel on First Street and what is now M-81, and that building still stands as a house.
Construction began in 1871 on a church at the current location, and workers completed the church in 1873.
During the Watrousville congregation’s early years in the mid-1800s, traveling preachers known as “circuit riders” served area congregations, journeying often on horseback and fording streams or plodding through swamps to reach their destinations, according to historal records.
Even though the church was first called Watrousville Episcopal Church, Sanders said “It was founded by the circuit riders of the Methodist denomination.”
In 1861, the Watrousville church “was set off by itself and was known as the Watrousville circuit,” according to a written history of the church. During a quarterly conference at Vassar in 1865, trustees of the Watrousville church were elected, noting “The corporation to be described and known as the Trustees of the First Methodist Society in Watrousville.”
Fire destroyed the church — then known as the Watrousville Episcopal Methodist Church — on Oct. 10, 1937 due to a faulty furnace or chimney. The blaze took place on a Sunday morning and congregation members managed to save pews that still serve as pews in the church today, according to Sanders.
The church became known as the Watrousville Methodist Church in 1939, and changed its name to the Watrousville United Methodist Church in 1968 following a merger with the Evangelical United Brethren, according to Sanders.
A signature feature of the church is its pulpit, fashioned from a walnut piano in 1981 by Frank Schlereth and dedicated in memory of his mother.
Sanders said church members will promote the newly expanded church as accessible to those using wheelchairs or walkers. Before the renovation, those entering the church had to travel up stairs to reach the sanctuary level, and then go down stairs to reach the basement social area.
“The stairs were treacherous,” Sanders said. “The purpose is to make the church available to everyone, and it’s been difficult to get in our church.”